Green lasers

We bought a bright green laser a few months ago after reading that dogs (and some cats!) will chase them even more readily than the older red laser we already had. The new laser proved to be a great toy for the pets, exactly as advertised — just shine that green dot anywhere on the floor and watch your furry friends have a ball chasing it.

However, when reading an article about air safety, I discovered that there was an entirely different use for these things — you can use it to point out features in the sky. Instead of pointing with your finger vaguely in the direction of Orion's belt, you can point it out directly with the laser. I tried this on a recent evening, and it works stunningly well. I also tried our older red laser, and it worked, but not nearly so well. I'm not sure if that's due to the power difference (the green one is four times more powerful) or something abou the wavelength, or both differences combined. But whatever the underlying physics, the fact is that with the green 500mw laser, you can point out features in the heavens as easily and as precisely as you can point to items on a printed page...

But read the article I linked to above to find out some reasons to be careful with them!

Good News Chrenkoff

And today he's got another one on Iraq...

Don't miss it!

Iraqi perspective

Iraq the Model is one of my favorite Iraqi blogs, not the least of which is because Omar (the blogger) has a talent for expressing his feelings effectively in English. In a rant today, Omar lays into the nay-sayers who deny that Iraqis are better off without Saddam and after the war. An excerpt:

There are actually a million stories I can tell to make a comparison between pre and post-Saddam Iraq and to show how dramatically life has improved since April 2003 and the list doesn't necessarily start from the security which is much better off now than under Saddam who murdered 3 million Iraqis during his reign; a figure that dwarfs any post-liberation body count or my salary as a dentist which increased by a hundred folds and doesn't end by the huge change in the Iraqi army that changed from a tool of repression for both, the conscripted soldiers and the civilian population to a security preserving tool that young Iraqis volunteer to join.

Technology and communications had their share too; we moved from a country where your e mail needs two weeks to pass through the filters of the Mukhabarat to a country where people like me can publish their thought to the entire world by a click!

And as our author of honor here is British I'd like to add that before April 2003, being caught while listening to the anti-war BBC radio could throw the listener in jail for indefinite time.

Anyway, if I wanted to talk about every single positive change, I should probably write a book about it as a blog post can't hold all that information.

By European and American standards, Iraq could be considered hell on earth and I agree; life is difficult here, really difficult for many Iraqis and it would be almost impossible for a European or an American but the question here is this: is it more difficult now than under Saddam?The answer is NO.

But please read the whole thing!